Peer Group Networks and Adolescent Smoking

描述（由申请人提供）：这项关于癌症预防、控制和人口科学的K07提案将使申请人能够通过检查背景因素和群体水平过程，建立我们对烟草使用的个人水平途径和轨迹的现有知识，从而对烟草使用的病因学产生更全面的理解。同伴群体在青少年吸烟的开始和发展中起着关键作用。大多数关于青少年吸烟的研究都以个体为分析单位，而同龄人吸烟则是通过青少年对其朋友吸烟情况的报告来衡量的。社会网络分析的概念框架和方法利用同伴提名数据来构建友谊联系，使个体之间的关系模式能够在更大的社会环境中被确定和解释。作为一种了解青少年健康行为发展的机制，这种方法尚未得到充分利用，而且很少有研究将同龄人群体作为分析单位来了解社会影响和青少年烟草使用。研究设计包括两项研究，每项研究都旨在了解同龄人群体成员与青少年吸烟相关的社会背景。研究1将使用来自国家青少年健康纵向研究的现有数据来检查在两个时间点的青少年同龄人群体中是否存在对吸烟的影响。潜在的调节变量，如性别、种族和父母变量将被检查。研究2将涉及两年的新数据收集，将重点放在一个种族多样化的城市中学的一个社会网络系统的前青少年样本中对促进吸烟社会化影响的脆弱性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This K07 proposal in cancer prevention, control, and population sciences will enable the applicant to build on our existing knowledge of individual-level pathways and trajectories of tobacco use by examining contextual factors and group level processes to yield more comprehensive understandings of the etiology of tobacco use. Peer groups play a critical role in the initiation and progression of adolescent smoking. Most studies of youth smoking have used the individual as the unit of analysis and peer smoking has been measured by adolescent report of their friends' smoking. The conceptual framework and methodology of social network analysis utilizes peer-nomination data to construct friendship links that allow patterns of relationships among individuals to be determined and interpreted within the context of the larger social environment. This methodology has been underutilized as a mechanism for understanding the development of health behaviors in youth and few studies exist that have used the peer group as the unit of analysis to understand social influences and youth tobacco use. The research design comprises two studies, each aimed at understanding the social context in which peer group membership is related to youth smoking. Study 1 will use existing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine whether influence on smoking occurs within the context of adolescent peer groups across two time points. Potential moderator variables such as gender, ethnicity, and parental variables will be examined. Study 2 will involve two years of novel data collection that will focus on vulnerabilities to prosmoking socialization influences in a sample of pre-adolescents in one social network system of an ethnically diverse urban middle school. The goals of the career development plan are to broaden conceptual and analytic knowledge of social network analysis as it can be applied to peer group formation and stages of cigarette smoking in youth and to develop innovative methodologies to bridge the analysis of individual and group level data. This training plan is intended to provide mastery of skills in group level analyses and promising new methodology that will enable the applicant to develop an independent program of cancer prevention research. The long-term objectives are to translate knowledge derived from studies of contextual influences on the etiology of tobacco use into culturally sensitive, developmentally appropriate, and novel prevention interventions that reinforce protective influences in youth's social environments.